Michelle A Eng Leang

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Coali­tion of Ser­vices In­dus­tries (TTC­SI) is em­bark­ing on a project to de­vel­op a strate­gic plan to strength­en the com­pet­i­tive­ness of se­lect­ed ser­vices sec­tors in Trinidad and To­ba­go. A UK firm, CTA Eco­nom­ic Ex­port An­a­lysts Ltd was ap­point­ed by the Com­mon­wealth sec­re­tari­at to as­sist the gov­ern­ment and TTC­SI in the de­vel­op­ment of strate­gies and ac­tion plans.

Mark Helly­er, di­rec­tor of CTA Eco­nom­ic spoke at the launch of the project on Fri­day, and ex­pressed his be­lief in the po­ten­tial of the ex­port of ser­vices in T&T. "It is clear to us that there is great po­ten­tial here in Trinidad and To­ba­go for the ex­port of ser­vices. If you look at the sta­tis­tics and you ex­clude oil and gas, ser­vices ex­port ac­counts for 26 per cent of ex­ports, so that's al­ready sig­nif­i­cant.

How­ev­er, what's no­tice­able re­al­ly is ser­vices ex­port is not on the agen­da, they're not very vis­i­ble but are very im­por­tant. I think that's one of the things that needs to change. There needs to be recog­ni­tion that ser­vices ex­port are im­por­tant."

Growth of ser­vices ex­port flat

To date, CTA Eco­nom­ic has un­der­tak­en a scop­ing mis­sion and a di­ag­nos­tic analy­sis of the in­dus­try and Helly­er said that this has shown that the growth of ser­vices ex­port has been quite flat. "In oth­er coun­tries in the world, the av­er­age growth is 10 per cent year a year over the last five years. If we look at a coun­try for ex­am­ple like Mau­ri­tius, they grew by 22 per cent, every sin­gle year for the last five years.

"Now, if Trinidad and To­ba­go had done that, ser­vices ex­port would now be worth US$2.5 bil­lion and would have added 1 per cent every year to the GDP. So that's the kind of po­ten­tial there is." Ad­mit­ting that they are at the be­gin­ning of de­vel­op­ing the strat­e­gy, Helly­er be­lieves there are key lessons from oth­er coun­tries that should be con­sid­ered in the process.

"First of all there needs to be a na­tion­al ap­proach. Ser­vices are not sold in the same way as a prod­uct. So for ex­am­ple, des­ti­na­tions are mar­ket­ed so when some­one is look­ing at med­ical tourism they look at coun­tries such as In­dia, Thai­land and the Phillip­ines. If you're look­ing at busi­ness pro­cess­ing out­sourc­ing, you look at Thai­land, In­dia, South Africa and Chi­na.

So there is a need for a na­tion­al ap­proach to be tak­en so Trinidad and To­ba­go is pro­mot­ed for its strengths in the ser­vices sec­tor. These are the kinds of things that need to hap­pen and it has to hap­pen at a na­tion­al lev­el."

Pri­vate sec­tor, gov­ern­ment must co-op­er­ate

He al­so stressed the need for the pri­vate sec­tor to en­gage as well. "The pri­vate sec­tor has to or­gan­ise it­self and come to­geth­er. It has to start co-op­er­at­ing and re­alise that they're not com­peti­tors with each oth­er any­more. They're ac­tu­al­ly com­ple­men­tary and can do joint mar­ket­ing and ac­tiv­i­ty for big­ger glob­al mar­ket."

The sec­ond pri­or­i­ty is fos­ter­ing greater part­ner­ships with gov­ern­ment. "The sec­tors through the as­so­ci­a­tions and the pri­vate sec­tor bod­ies need to work with gov­ern­ment and gov­ern­ment needs to work with them. For ex­am­ple, in Mau­ri­tius the re­al key fac­tor of suc­cess there was the fact that the dif­fer­ent sub­sec­tors of ser­vices were very well or­gan­ised to­geth­er and worked ex­treme­ly close­ly with gov­ern­ment and that's the kind of thing that we need in our strat­e­gy for ser­vices. TTC­SI will pay a very in­stru­men­tal role in fa­cil­i­tat­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion of sec­tors and al­so the close work­ing re­la­tion­ship with gov­ern­ment."

Tewarie: Find­ings, ac­tion plan by Sep­tem­ber

Ni­rad Tewarie, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of TTC­SI cit­ed med­ical tourism, yacht­ing ser­vices, off­shore ed­u­ca­tion and pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices in­clud­ing ar­chi­tec­ture and en­gi­neer­ing as the se­lect­ed ser­vices sec­tors. "We're go­ing to come up with de­tailed strate­gies to help com­pa­nies in these sec­tors to ex­port more.

Based on the pre­lim­i­nary work of Mark and his team, we see that there can be more than a 60 per cent in­crease in over­all ser­vices ex­port if we are able to meet the tar­gets we are set­ting in just these sec­tors alone. TTC­SI have been work­ing very hard over the last few years to se­cure the re­sources nec­es­sary to in­crease ser­vices ex­port."

Tewarie added that the TTC­SI be­lieve that these sec­tors are "re­new­able, plen­ti­ful and high growth and of­fer re­al op­por­tu­ni­ties for lo­cals who want to stay in Trinidad and To­ba­go, and to en­gage the rest of the world to de­vel­op them­selves and en­sure that eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion can be mean­ing­ful­ly achieved and growth main­tained."

He states that sev­er­al projects have been set up over the last few years to achieve this and this is just one of those projects. "In this project we will be work­ing with stake­hold­ers in the in­dus­try and this ses­sion fol­lows three days of meet­ings with CTA Eco­nom­ic and the Com­mon­wealth Sec­re­tari­at and stake­hold­ers from the in­dus­try. The stake­hold­ers are very en­thu­si­as­tic from the feed­back and will be part­ner­ing with us. We will gath­er da­ta in these sec­tors which we will present our find­ings in Sep­tem­ber along with the ac­tion plan."

Jag­ger­nauth: Govt must get the prop­er leg­is­la­tion in place

TTC­SI's pres­i­dent Ra­bindra Jag­ger­nauth said, "There are things that need to be done with­in. Things that the gov­ern­ment and the pri­vate sec­tor have to do to work to­wards mak­ing sure that what is re­quired hap­pen across all sec­tors. Gov­ern­ment has to be ag­ile from the point of view of get­ting the prop­er leg­is­la­tion in place to fa­cil­i­tate and en­hance the tech­nol­o­gy to al­low these sec­tors to thrive."

He used the Ex­che­quers and Au­dit Act as an ex­am­ple of leg­is­la­tion pro­hibit­ing progress in terms of al­low­ing cit­i­zens to pay for gov­ern­ment ser­vices on­line. "To date, those changes have not been made and this is hold­ing back the pop­u­la­tion and the pri­vate sec­tor in many ways, in­clud­ing the abil­i­ty to pay tax­es on­line, to pay for birth cer­tifi­cates on­line and so on. Sim­ple things that will al­low greater ef­fec­tive­ness and to al­low ser­vices to move ahead much quick­er."

Jag­ger­nauth al­so called on the pri­vate sec­tor to play their part. "The pri­vate sec­tor has to em­brace the ser­vices avail­able to them and re­al­ly lead the way to play a more im­por­tant role. This project is part and par­cel of ed­u­cat­ing the sec­tors of what needs to be done by pro­vid­ing da­ta and sta­tis­tics on how to­geth­er, we can im­prove the sec­tors."

Part­ner­ships need­ed at all lev­els

Com­mon­wealth Sec­re­tari­at rep­re­sen­ta­tive Es­tel­la Arya­da be­lieves part­ner­ship is key. "The ser­vices sec­tor is made up of many dif­fer­ent in­dus­tries and as­so­ci­a­tions as well as the pri­vate sec­tor. There is the need for part­ner­ship at all lev­els."

The project is now en­ter­ing its sec­ond stage and will seek to de­fine and de­vel­op sec­tor pro­files sup­port­ed by da­ta to en­able a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the ac­tiv­i­ties tak­ing place and more im­por­tant­ly il­lu­mi­nate the op­por­tu­ni­ties for growth as well as the con­straints faced by ser­vice providers. De­tailed ac­tion plans based on these find­ings will be re­vealed in Sep­tem­ber.